


Fire and Blood

by Devilbaby



Series: The Chronos Saga [3]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Five Centric, Gen, If I shoved any more Fives into this story it would lose structural integrity, Mental Illness, Number Five x4, character death (sort of?), creepy children, like really REALLY Five-centric, warnings for: canon-level violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-08
Updated: 2020-06-08
Packaged: 2020-07-27 21:19:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 10,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20052703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Devilbaby/pseuds/Devilbaby
Summary: With the help of some enigmatic allies, the Umbrella Academy prepares to take on the Commission in a final effort to save their brother, their timeline and the future of the human race.No pressure.





	1. CHRONOS

**6:32pm, Sunday September 8th, 2019**

Diego's heard a lot of weird shit in his life because his life is weird and also shit and his perception of 'normal' is skewed about six feet to the left on a good day but this...this is fucked up even by his standards. 

_How much do you know about clones,_ says the man who looks the way his brother might look if he were twenty-five instead of thirteen or fifty-eight or however old he is. _How much do you know about clones,_ says the man who moved through space the way Five did, who used a knife the way Five did, who'd saved their lives the way Five did (the only real difference being this Five bitched about it significantly less). _How much do you know about clones, _said the man who might be Five or just a piece of him, a clump of autonomous, knife wielding cells and Diego needs a fucking drink.

(But there's another body on the floor behind them laying in a pool of it's own blood and this one does look thirteen and there isn't enough alcohol in the whole city to make _that_ okay. )

To be honest everything Diego knows about clones he learned from shitty Saturday night Sci-Fi B movies so the only two reasonable responses he has to a question like that are silence and disbelief. Appropriately, he goes with number two. "I swear to God man if this is some kind of fucking joke-"

"Does that look a joke to you?" Five asks, gesturing towards the body of their un-brother. "He came here to kill you. All of you." He closes his eyes, exhausted in a way that tells Diego he's probably hit his physical limit just like the other Five had and he pictures the two of them warping all over the house trying to murder each other. "We couldn't let that happen."

"We?" asks Luther, but Five's only response is a soul-weary sigh that pulls it's way up from his toes. "Five, who's 'we'?" Luther asks again, reaching out to give him a surprisingly gentle shake. He doesn't get the chance to make contact before Five grabs ahold of his wrist and pushes him away and Diego pretends he doesn't see Luther wince. 

Five never even opens his eyes.

It's a tense couple of moments while Diego watches his (maybe, possibly) brother slowly bleed on himself. "Can you walk?" he asks after a bit. Five doesn't answer and that pisses him off until he realizes it's because Five's out cold, slumped against the wall, body curled like a comma around the knife sticking out of his shoulder. He'd held on just long enough to make sure they were safe and that- that was definitely Five's style.

"We should get him to the medical room," Allison says. Luther doesn't move right away, still staring at the face that was both strange and familiar, all sharp angles and corners, none of the child they knew but recognizable all the same. Five's face, a man's face, and maybe a killer's too.

"Do you think he's telling the truth?" asks Luther and Diego says yes because he doesn't want to consider the alternative.

  
  
***

Someone has to get rid of the body, and that job falls to Diego and Luther. Diego because he hates needles and hadn't wanted to stand around watching Five get stitched up and Luther because he was good with a shovel. They make quick work of it, burying their gruesome cargo out in the courtyard next to Ben's statue. There are several reasons for this which they don't bother sharing with each other. They don't bother speaking at all. 

There's too much to say.

Diego tries not to think about how small and light the body is. Tries not to think of it as his brother at all but it's not easy. Not when it's got his brother's face, death-grey and cold and his brother's dark shock of hair falling over his forehead and his brother's eyes staring sightlessly up at him.

It's still wearing an academy uniform.

Luther wraps it in a blanket before they start digging. They don't have a coffin and neither of them like the idea of simply shoveling dirt on top of it. All in all it takes a couple hours and would have taken more but the ground is soft with rain and Luther channels his grief into action, plowing through the mud with his mouth in a hard line and Diego doesn't say anything about the tears on his face.

It might just be rainwater; they both have plausible deniability.

_It's not your brother,_ he reminds himself as he starts filling in the dirt. _It was never your brother._

The words don't help as much as he hoped they would.

Back inside they trudge down to the medical room, mud on their shoes leaving an incriminating trail across the pristine tile and someone's going to have to clean it up now mom wasn't there but it isn't going to be him. He's cleaned up enough messes for one day.

The others are waiting in the surgery. They hadn't come because that would have been too much like a funeral. Vanya and Klaus are there; she's leaning against him with her head on his shoulder and he's got an arm around her like he's afraid she'll shatter without him there to hold her together. 

Diego wonders who's supposed to be holding _him_ together.

"It's done," he says, voice sawed off and rough sounding. Vanya turns her face into Klaus' chest and starts to cry again. He still hasn't gotten the story of exactly what happened to her, though he can guess at the broad strokes. He wants to believe it's empirical proof the body out in the courtyard couldn't possibly be Five, because Five would never hurt Vanya like that.

But that wasn't true anymore and hadn't been for weeks.

"Thank you," Allison says and he just nods, feeling like someone had taken a shovel to _him_, scooped him out and left him empty as a grave; nothing left but his bones. He glances at the sleeping man on the bed, overcome with a sensation of weary familiarity. How many times, across how many timelines, in how many universes were they going to stand here gathered in the surgery, watching Five sleep, wondering who he would wake up as?

Klaus clears his throat and says, "Pogo took some hair samples, fingerprints too. We'll know soon enough if it's him."

"It fucking better be," says Diego, and he thinks it is, he really does but what if he's wrong? And even if it is Five, how does he know if it's _a_ Five or _the_ Five and he'd already said he's a clone, but here's the thing; Five had been confused long before this. Hadn't been well at all, brain scrambled by time travel and twisted in on itself and how could they be sure of anything? What if the kid they just buried in the yard had been the real Five? (He's attacked them before, almost killed Klaus and that's why they had to use paper plates, because you couldn't be sure one day to the next and yet, and _yet_ even when he was in the middle of an episode he hadn't looked like the person who attacked them tonight, Diego could still recognize Five even when he couldn't recognize them but not tonight, tonight he'd been a stranger in every sense of the word and there hadn't been anything but madness in his eyes-)

"Diego?" Allison asks and he realizes she's been trying to get his attention. He focuses on her and she repeats herself. "We wanted to show you something." She gestures him forward and he goes like a puppet on strings, stiff marionette march to Five's bedside. Allison turns down the white sheet and doesn't say anything, just looks at him expectantly. He looks down.

"What-" he swallows, "what the fuck is that?"

He knows what he's looking at but he doesn't understand it. It's a scar - a welt - ridged white lines of raised flesh forming a perfect row of letters just over Five's heart: **CHRONOS**.

Luther steps up beside him, dollops of brownish mud still clinging to his coat. Same uncomprehending stare on his face. "What's 'chronos'?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The third and final part of the Chronos Saga is up, and all shall be revealed. Eventually.


	2. Idiosyncrasy

**8:47pm, Sunday September 8th, 2019**

Klaus still remembers his first scar, the result of a training accident and his father's staunch refusal to believe in things like safety mats. ("Do you think your enemies will give you the comfort of a soft place to land?")

He'd sat in this very room with the blood dripping down his chin, withering under his father's disapproving glare as Grace put a row of small black stitches under his bottom lip. "It will probably scar," she'd said and Reginald harrumphed at her in response. "Scars remind us that adversity can be overcome," he'd told Klaus, who was trying not to cry because Reginald didn't believe in tears either. "That pain, disease and violence are obstacles which can be triumphed over. Your scars are proof that you have survived."

Klaus had been six years old.

He's seen a lot of scars since then, even helped make a few (both his and others). He's seen chemical burns, puncture wounds, knives. Scars made by fire and cigarettes and needles. But he's never seen a scar like the one emblazed across Five's chest; the chain too-neat letters; typewriter print punched into his skin by some impersonal machine. Something about it sticks in his head, scratching at the back of his mind like a heroin itch. It reminds him of a polo shirt logo. 

Or dog tags.

"Ah, shit-" he mutters, running spidery fingers through his hair as his much-abused brain finally makes the connection, as he finally realizes what it is he's looking at and Luther turns towards him like a question mark. "You guys...it's an insignia. _Identification_. The Commission must've put it there, like-"

"Like a brand," Diego cuts in bitterly, voice grinding like broken glass. "Like cattle."

Allison makes a small sound and covers her mouth.

"Did- did the other Five have one of those?" Luther asks quietly and they all look at each other, searching one another's faces for an answer none of them have. 

"I don't- we never saw him with his shirt off, did we?" Vanya asks and Klaus shakes his head because he certainly hadn't and he's pretty sure no one else has either. Five was- 'modest' is the first word that comes to mind but it doesn't really fit. Five was many things but modest had never been one of them. Private, then. Secretive. Annoyingly, frustratingly taciturn. He tries to remember the last time he'd seen anything of Five between his neck and knees and concludes it was sometime back in childhood, before he slung shot himself into the future. 

"No," Klaus says, "but Pogo looked him over when he reappeared last week, didn't he? I think he would have noticed something like that." He's not sure what it says about them as a family, that they really can't be sure whether or not Five has been walking around with the word 'Chronos' carved into his skin. Probably nothing good.

But he understands what Luther's really asking, and it makes him feel a little ill.

Diego sits heavily in the chair and no one has the heart to say what they're all thinking. That they'd gotten it wrong. That if they dug up the body buried in the courtyard it wouldn't have any mysterious scar, because that body was Five's. Their Five.

"Oh God," Luther says, looking about the same way Klaus feels. 

"We don't know anything for sure," Klaus says, holding onto Vanya just a little tighter because he needs to be able to reach out and touch his siblings right now. 

"We have to check," Luther says, swallowing around the words. "We have to be sure."

Diego shakes his head. "I c-can't...I can't do that again man. Not this soon."

"I'll do it," Luther says softly.

"Hey, wait- wait wait," Klaus says a bit desperately. "I can- maybe I can just summon him and ask, you know?" He's not fond of the idea, because one dead brother following him around was more than enough but he's willing to do just about anything to scrub that look from Luther's face. "No need to go grave robbing just yet, yeah?"

"Would that work?" Luther asks him, but Klaus doesn't get the chance to answer.

"Would what work?" asks Five, and five heads swivel in tandem to regard him, conversation discarded. He grimaces and opens his eyes, hazel-green and too familiar and Klaus _knows_ those eyes. They belong to a cocky thirteen year old troublemaker and a broken, sixty year old man and a cold-blooded assassin Klaus has watched kill without hesitation more than once. Someone who's been lost in time and almost destroyed by it. His brother's eyes. Older now but still recognizable. It's like looking at a ghost, except ghosts never grow up.

Klaus clears his throat. "That scar," he begins, because someone has to break the ice and he's used to talking to ghosts anyway so it might as well be him, "The one on your chest. What's chronos? Is that your name, or-?" _Or did you just kill our brother?_ Is the unspoken end to that sentence.

Five glances down at himself. "Our _name_ is Number Five," he says testily, "Chronos is what we are." He groans and reaches up, feeling the stitches along his shoulder. Klaus is just about to tell him how extremely unhelpful that is when Five's eyes go wide with momentary panic. "Wh-How long have we been out!?" 

"Couple hours?" Klaus says uncertainly, not because he doesn't know the answer but because he isn't sure why it matters. 

"Shit!" Five swears, leveraging himself off the bed and nearly falling, still weak from what Klaus assumes must be the energy drain of having maxed out his teleportation ability. Well, that and getting stabbed in the shoulder, that probably had something to do with it too. Several pairs of hands reach out in aid, Klaus' included even though he's on the other side of the bed and can't really help much.

Five bats them away with an impatient scowl. "We're fine," he bites out despite all evidence to the contrary and Klaus knows how useless arguing with the other Five had always been when it came to anything so he doesn't bother.

"What's the rush, short stack?" he doesn't really mean to add the nickname but he's understandably freaked out by everything so he forgives himself.

"Don't call us that," Five growls, face twisting in irritation as he gets his feet under him. "We've always hated that. And 'the rush' is because the Commission will be expecting a check-in from their field agent soon and if they don't get one they're going to come looking and if we're still around when they get here, it's gonna get messy. Where's our shirt?" he asks suddenly, and Allison holds up a ball of shredded material.

"Pogo had to cut if off. You had a knife sticking out of your shoulder."

Five rolls his eyes, 'cause stopping him from bleeding to death was such an _inconvenience_ but rather than say anything he simply walks out of the medical room and heads for the stairs.

"Where are you going?" Vanya calls after him and Five doesn't even slow down.

"We need to have a look around our room," he answers, already heading up. Klaus shares a look with Ben, shrugs and follows behind because what else is there to do?

Diego isn't nearly so complying. He pushes his way past Klaus, walking fast and catching up with Five as he reaches the top of the landing. He grabs him by his good arm and spins him around, pinning him against the wall with their chests pressed together. Diego's face is alive with pent-up frustration, flickering like a neon sign. Five in contrast is still and calm as glass, preternaturally so, not even the usual irritation he would display at unexpected contact. He stares at Diego with a leveled gaze, completely unintimidated and thoroughly unimpressed. "We need some straight answers," Diego demands, shoulders hunched with coiled tension and if Five had been wearing a shirt he probably would have grabbed it. "What the fuck is going on? Did you just kill our brother?"

Five regards him passively. "We killed one of them," he says and Diego looks like he's about to throw hands. Luther steps forward, ready to put himself between them but Five stays him with a look before turning his attention back to Diego. "But he was a clone, like us- like me."

"Are you sure?" Asks Luther and Five gives an eerily familiar scoff.

"Of course I'm sure. Jesus Luther, I'm not an idiot. We can tell the difference." 

"Then how come he looked thirteen and you don't?" Klaus asks, wondering who 'we' is supposed to connote. The Commission? Other clones? The voices in his head? Who knows, Klaus sure as hell doesn't. This day has been so fucking weird already he's not ruling out anything.

"He was created to infiltrate the academy. Kinda hard to do if we show up looking like anything but a thirteen year old kid."

_We_.

"He didn't 'infiltrate' us," Diego counters. "He tried to slaughter us. Not exactly subtle." 

"Yeah well, things went sideways," Five says glibly. "Now, we can stand here talking until the Commission shows up, or you can let us do our job." 

"What _is_ your job?" Allison asks and Klaus has to admit it's a good question. A fucking fantastic question, actually.

"Keeping you idiots alive," he answers and it's such a _Five_ kind of thing to say that Klaus forgets to be indignant. 

"We've fought off the Commission before," Diego says but he steps back, the fire not gone from his eyes but tamped down to embers. 

Five just looks at him gravely. "No you haven't. Not like this."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well there was originally a lot more exposition in this chapter but it started to drag everything out and the whole thing was about to collapse in on itself from all the ~talking~ so i cut most of it out. 
> 
> I realize this does not help people seeking answers. Sometimes you have to prioritize pacing over exposition.
> 
> As per usual, criticism is always accepted.


	3. Been A Long Time Coming

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow okay, so this chapter is waaaay overdue. Hope I still have readers. 
> 
> Also, not entirely certain I'm done fiddling with it. I think I managed to pick up all the various plot points but honestly this story is so convoluted my notes have notes, so. Edits may be in order as I remember more about where the hell I was going with all of this.

**8:47pm, Sunday September 8th, 2019**

Klaus rubs his eyes because all this furtiveness is starting to give him a headache. How did anyone manage to be this secretive? Was every version of Five just - _like that_, or did the Commission offer courses? He sighs and drops his hands. "Okay look, I know keeping secrets is like, your brand or whatever but could you maybe be a little less vague? Because in case you haven't noticed some seriously weird shit is going on and I think we're entitled to a few answers before we blindly follow you anywhere."

Five watches him, something dangerous curling around the edges of his mouth and for a moment Klaus doesn't know if he's going to get scolded or hit, each scenario seems likely but finally Five just nods, face smoothing out once more. "It's a long story and we don't have time for the details. The Commission _will_ be back, just like they came back last time. Just like they _always_ come back, and we can't protect you here. So please, let's get somewhere safe, and then we promise to tell you everything we know."

Klaus wants to believe him and almost does. But so much has happened he's not sure he can take anything on faith anymore. (And it would probably help Five's credibility if he would stop referring to himself in the third person; it doesn't do anything to soothe Klaus' misgivings about his mental state.)

"Where could you possibly take us that would be safe from the Commission?" Allison asks, which was a really good point, actually. Where did you go to hide from people who could monitor all time and space?

"We have a- a safe house of sorts; it should be secure enough. For a little while anyway." He adds after a moment's thought.

"And how long is a little while?" Diego presses, asking the smart questions Klaus totally would have asked himself if he were a little less confused.

"Until they figure out how to breach the time lock," is Five's unhelpful answer.

"Right," Klaus mutters, "you know that's not actually being less vague."

"Klaus-" Five begins, and then seems to change his mind, giving himself a small shake. "Let's just get out of here, okay?" But he still heads up the stairs, which was the opposite of down and probably not the direction they should be going if they want to leave in a hurry. Not unless Five had learned how to fly, like some sort of fucked-up, reverse Peter Pan (then again, given everything else that's happened maybe he had.) 

"You said you had to look at your old room," Luther calls after him, hulking body filling the stairwell as they follow him up. "What are you looking for?"

"Answers. You guys aren't the only ones with questions."

"Answers to _what?_" Klaus complains, pissed off at the fact that while Five was technically answering their questions, he wasn't really telling them anything. Then again, that was Five, wasn't it? He was an asshole like that. (An asshole that had just technically killed himself to save them, but still.) Klaus isn't expecting an answer and that's good because he doesn't get one. What he gets is dead silence as he reaches the top of the stairs, his siblings hovering uncertainly in the doorway to Five's room. 

"Five-" he hears Vanya say gently, "I'm so sorry."

That piques his interest and he nudges his way past Diego, peering over Allison's shoulder. Five's staring wordlessly at the floor, at the broken bits of plastic that littered the carpet. He recognizes the pieces, the polka-doted blouse filled with the shards of something that had once been deeply important to his brother. "Oh, shit-" he gasps out, clapping a hand over his mouth.

Dolores has been smashed into hopeless pieces. Klaus looks from the mess to Five's face, bracing for impact because there was no timeline in which this was a good thing. "What- what happened?"

Five gives Dolores a considering look but his expression is wiped clean; Klaus can't read anything in his face. After another moment he shrugs, turning away. "Don't know, doesn't matter."

The really horrible thing is he sounds like he means it.

"Whoa, wait-" Luther says, laying a dangerous hand on Five's shoulder. "What do you mean 'it doesn't matter'?"

Five shrugs his hand off, eyes scanning the walls, the mathematical gibberish scrawled all over in an increasingly illegible hand. "It's just a hunk of plastic, Luther." He sounds disinterested, as if he really didn't care at all.

They share a look, the confused alarm of a group of people who know something is deeply wrong but don't know exactly what. They should have a word for that look, Klaus thinks. They use it often enough.

Diego stares at Five. "She was important to you, man."

"She was important to one of us," he corrects. 

Klaus regards him warily, because of all the things Five's said and done over the past couple hours this is the one that really has him worried. The one that doesn't fit. Five assuming he knew better than them? Check. Five being a reticent asshole? Definitely check. Five swooping in and saving their lives in a dramatic fashion and then passing out without bothering to explain anything? Well, it hadn't ever happened exactly like that before but it was still pretty on-brand for their brother, so check. But a Five who didn't care about Dolores, who referred to her as 'a hunk of plastic'...he can buy the story about clones before he can buy that. It makes him wonder how many memories this Five has of himself; if he recognizes Dolores at all. How much did he actually feel for any of them, and how much was just Five pantomiming his way through his own life? 

How much of their brother had actually returned to them, and how much was just...a ghost?

Vanya looks between Five and the hellish wall decor, studying him as he studied it. "You said 'answers'- you meant these equations, didn't you? They mean something."

"They aren't equations," he answers distractedly, fingers tracing over the faded chalk symbols. "Not the way you understand them. It's a code."

"A code?" asks Allison and Five nods.

"We developed it in the apocalypse. It uses a mathematical base instead of an alphabet. Unreadable, unless one's familiar with advanced physics and quantum theory. Even then, you need a key..." his voice trails off as he stares at it. "Damn," he mutters after a moment. "It's not here."

"What's not here?" Klaus asks, thinking back to the time when Five had been ill with time sickness, the weird obsession he'd had with scratching those random equations all over everything. Walls, books, anything he could get his chalk-dusted hands on. At the time Klaus hadn't really thought much about it; he'd had more important things to worry about. Now though...

The realization is accompanied by a twisting sensation in his gut, like he swallowed a live eel and it was squirming around in his stomach trying to get comfortable. All those weeks and months, all those endless equations they were so hasty to erase. All the notebooks and papers, covered in Five's mad scrawl, the whole time...he'd been trying to communicate.

_Christ, Five,_ he thinks at his brother, _I'm sorry. We didn't know._ He wants to apologize, say the words out loud, give them purpose so they'll stop rattling around in his head like copper pennies but it's obvious Five isn't paying attention to any of them right now. He's rummaging through the room instead, flipping through books and papers so fast Klaus is amazed he can read anything at all. 

"What are you looking for?" Vanya asks, and he glances at her with a distracted frown.

"The location of the Prime," he answers nonsensically. "The other one- the one we killed; pretty sure he knew. The twins said we'd written it down."

"The Prime?" asks Luther, looking as confused as Klaus felt. 

"The twins?" asks Allison, also confused. 

"Written what down?" Diego chimes in and at least Klaus isn't the only one who has no idea what's going on.

"_Five_, their brother says, waving his hands at them in agitation. "Your Five, he's out there somewhere. We need to find him."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well you didn't think I'd make mention of a secret code all the way back in part 1 and then not do anything with it, did you?
> 
> As always comments, theories and constructive criticism welcomed, loved and appreciated.


	4. Mr. Fahrenheit

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally, answers! (Not all of them, because holy crap there are a lot, but some.)
> 
> EDIT: I rewrote the last half of this chapter, cut out a lot of exposition and put it in chapter 5. It's much shorter now but closer to the way I originally envisioned it.

**8:48pm, Sunday September 8th, 2019**

Luther has spent his entire life trusting too much and never questioning anything. 

He'd trusted their father. Trusted that he loved them, and that he wanted what was best for them, even if Luther didn't understand the methods used. He trusted they were being prepared for greatness, because Reginald Hargreeves had told them so. And even after his father turned him into a monster, Luther trusted it had been the only way to save his life. (It's what had stopped him from killing himself, back in the beginning. That it had been done 'for his sake'. Besides, if he died then his father would be alone, and Luther couldn't do that to him. Obviously, that was before he got banished to the moon.)

He'd also trusted his time on the moon had been important.

When that trust finally broke the aftershocks ended the world. After realizing his entire life had been a lie Luther didn't - couldn't - trust anyone, and Vanya had born the brunt of his disillusionment. He'd lost his father, lost his faith, lost his sense of self and almost lost Allison, and the last thing he was prepared to do was trust anyone in his life had good intentions.

After they stopped the Apocalypse Luther worked on picking up the pieces of his own broken world. Worked on earning Vanya's forgiveness, on trusting his family and being trusted by them. Worked on being more than the Good Son, the obedient soldier their father had molded him into.

But then Five got sick. Then Five disappeared. Then Five came back and tried to kill him (and almost succeeded).

Now Luther looks at the man wearing his brother's face and doesn't know what to think. He doesn't know what's happening, doesn't know if they're being lied to or not, led into a trap or not. All he knows for certain is that trouble seemed to follow Five like a second shadow, and the rest of the family too often found themselves pulled into the umbra. And right here they were again, this future-version of Five come back to save them with a cryptic warning on his lips, a gun in his hand and the Commission dogging his trail every step of the way. 

Maybe history didn't repeat itself, but it sure as hell rhymed.

The trouble is that Luther isn't a fast thinker, never has been. He's not stupid but his intelligence is an average, humble sort of thing, especially compared to Five. And this Five isn't giving him any time to organize his thoughts, herding everyone out of the room with his arms full of papers. 

"Right," he says, "Let's go."

"To the safe house?" Vanya asks, but Luther cuts in before his brother has a chance to answer. 

"No," he says, stepping forward and planting his feet; an immovable object to Five's nigh unstoppable force. "Not to the safe house."

Five glares up at him, eyes flashing in predictable anger. "Luther, what the fuck? We told you-"

He takes a deep breath because Five isn't going to like what he's about to say and that's always treacherous ground to navigate. "I heard you. You said the Commission is on the way and we need to leave. Fine, I'll buy it; you've never been wrong about that before. But you're not taking us to any safe house, not yet." The color is already rising in his brother's face so he hurries on, getting it out in one long breath before he could be overrun. "We'll go somewhere public and neutral; a diner, a mall, wherever you want, and then you're going to explain things. Because as grateful as I am that you saved us tonight, I'm not ready to put our lives completely into your hands just yet." 

That declaration goes about as well as expected, a familiar, sharp look coming into Five's face, calculated insults flickering behind his eyes. He wants to argue. He wants to yell and rant and call Luther a dumbass, fling his multiple failures of leadership back at him. Five wants to cut him down until he isn't a threat anymore, because Five only saw the world in terms of threats and non-threats and Luther tries not to blame him for that, not knowing what he does about Five's life (and the more he can only guess at) but it doesn't make him any easier to deal with.

But for what it's worth - and he can acknowledge that it might be worth very little - he's the leader, and he can't send his family into a vast unknown like this. He'll be a lot more ready to trust this strange version of his brother once he understands what's happening beyond some vague threat of 'the Commission'. He needs to know why - _how_ \- Five is here. And he needs a reason to believe it's not just another trick.

Clones he _can_ believe; it's no crazier than anything else in Five's mad world. Luther had believed him about the apocalypse and about the Commission and about being sixty years old; he'll believe in clones too. But believing Five and trusting him are two different things, and Luther doesn't trust him right now. (It probably has something to do with the gash across his chest.)

Five glances around but can tell as easily as Luther that they've united against him (that's how he'll see it, anyway). "Goddamnit," he hisses between clenched teeth, jaw ticking in agitation. He tears a hand through his hair and glowers up at Luther again before giving in. "Fine, have it your way. But it'll have to be fast. We can't protect you idiots out in the open. And if they find us-" he hesitates, seeming to search for the right words '-you will do exactly as we say. Understand?"

Luther nods his agreement along with the others; it seems a reasonable enough request in exchange for some long overdue answers.

"Then let's let's move," he snaps, heading for the stairs but Diego stops him with a hand hooked around his arm. "You can't go out like that, man."

Five makes an irritated noise in the back of his throat, jerking out of Diego's hold. "Like what?"

Diego makes a point of looking him over. "Half naked. It's September, it's raining and you're not wearing a shirt. You'll freeze to death before you get a chance to help us do anything."

"You should probably put some clothes on," Luther agrees, but of course that begged the question of who's clothes he was going to be putting on, because all Five's shirts had been purchased with a 13 year old in mind. 

Five looks two steps away from working himself into a fit over yet another delay but he's also smart enough to know they have a point. Surprisingly it's Klaus who smooths things over, stepping forward and hastily throwing a coat at him. "Here, use this for now. We can pick you up something along the way." Because it's Klaus, naturally it's a lady's coat - long, tapered black with fir trim at the collar and sleeves. Luther thinks it must have been pretty fashionable back in the fifties, before being banished to the back of whatever thrift store his rat-pack brother had fished it out of. Surprisingly Five doesn't even argue, just wraps it around himself with a noncommittal grunt and keeps moving. 

"You know it actually kind of suits you," Klaus says appreciatively, and Luther considers chuckling but changes his mind at the look Five gives him.

"So where are we going to go?" Allison asks, "The Super Star? Ihop?"

"No," Five answers flatly, "those are the first places they'll check." He rounds on Klaus, "You're up; pick someplace quiet."

Klaus blinks in surprise. "Me?"

Five waves an impatient hand at him. "You've run all over this city looking for drugs. You know every shit-hole out of the way place there is. Take us somewhere nobody would think to look. And since we're delaying things anyway, you might as well make it somewhere with food."

Luther has to admit it's a pretty solid strategy. If anyone would know how to disappear into the cities' underbelly, it would be Klaus. 

"Ah, shit- lemmie think...food, clothes...yeah ok, got it. Follow me." He hops down the stairs but instead of heading through the foyer Five detours them towards the kitchen. 

"I need our briefcase," he explains, and duel slivers of doubt and fear lodge themselves firmly underneath Luther's ribcage.

"Since when did you need a briefcase to travel?" Diego asks, trying to keep his tone casual but Luther can see his hand hovering near his knives.

"Since traveling without one fried our brain," Five answers testily, and Luther has to admit it's a good point. Their mutual suspicion doesn't go unnoticed however and Five rolls his eyes at them. "Christ guys, calm down. For the last time, it's _me._ And if we wanted you dead you would be by now."

Somehow the thought is less comforting than it was probably meant to be.

  
  


***

**10:31pm, Sunday September 8th, 2019**

Luther watches Five shovel forkful after forkful of food into his mouth and concludes it's probably the single most profound act of bravery he's ever seen.

The place Klaus ultimately selected for them was indeed a shit-hole. A literal hole in the wall diner, complete with greasy floors, torn pleather booths that stuck to the skin and a cracked neon sign dolefully advertising a 24 hour breakfast. Pressed between a dilapidated thrift store and a bail bondsman, it wasn't anywhere Luther had ever been before- and it wasn't anywhere he'd care to seek out again.

"How did Klaus even find this place?" Allison wonders, glancing around in distaste and trying not to touch anything.

"They probably deal drugs out of the kitchen," Diego says, eyeing the finger smeared water glasses with deep mistrust. 

Luther thinks he's probably right, since the one thing that didn't seem be coming out of the kitchen was food. (Klaus wasn't there to ask because he'd disappeared as soon as they arrived, ostensibly going to find something for Five to wear. Considering all the shops were closed Luther decides he's probably better off not knowing how he planned to achieve that particular goal. Plausible deniability and all that.)

But none of that had stopped Five, who hadn't seemed to care about the quality of the food so long as it was marginally warm and slightly edible. 

"How can you eat that?" Diego asks in open disgust.

"We ate cockroaches and spiders in the apocalypse," Five answers in between bites, his mouth full. "Greasy eggs aren't that bad. Besides, our metabolism's higher in this body, so we don't turn down food."

"I'm not sure that counts as food," Diego replies, and Five just scoffs at him. 

"Neither do beetles."

Luther waits until his brother is mostly finished, because Five's obviously hungry and Luther spent four years on the moon waiting months between food rations so he understands the kind of hunger that could lead someone to eat like that. But as soon as the fork hits the plate he leans forward, oversized hands flat on the table. "Ok, start talking."

Five gives a mirthless scoff. "You'll need to be more specific. What is it you want to know?"

"Are you really a clone?"

Five sighs in terminal disappointment. "Jesus Christ, Luther. We're going to be here all damn night if that's the level you're starting at. Yes, we're a clone. Next question."

"If you're a clone then where's the real Five?" Vanya asks. She's been pretty quiet all night, sneaking glances at Five with her head down low, fingers subconsciously tracing over the red marks at her throat.

He gives her a sharp look. She withers a bit and it softens and that- that more than anything makes Luther want to trust him a little. Maybe. "We _are_ the real Five," he says, "But we assume you mean the Prime." At their questioning gazes he adds, "Your Five, he's the Prime; the first of us. And we don't know his exact temporal location but we can tell you the Commission still has him. We're certain of that." 

"How do you know?" That was Allison. 

"Because we've been up and down the timeline looking for him and he's not here. Trust us, if he'd gotten away this is where he'd be. But he isn't; the trail always ends with the Commission. So if the Prime's not here then it means he's back there."

There are still too many questions; Luther's head is swimming with them. He tries to organize them, prioritize because Five had said they didn't have a lot of time and that he does believe. Five never seemed to have enough time. Funny, that. "Okay, so, the one who tried to kill us tonight- the boy. He was a clone, yeah? What about the one who appeared in the kitchen a couple days ago? Was that Five or-"

The thing that isn't his brother shakes his head. "That _is_ the one that tried to kill you tonight. Same clone, different programming. You haven't seen the Prime in over a week. Not since we-_he_\- was taken."

Luther sits back, thunderstruck, letting the implications wash over him. If all that was true, then that meant...that meant none of it was real. The tears, the relief, the stupid fucking marshmallow sandwiches...none of it. They'd been played again. (Again.) It meant their brother was still lost.

It meant Five never came home at all. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The struggle of this chapter was not getting weighted down in the sheer amount of exposition there is, which I guess is a consequence of waiting until the last part of the story to tell you anything. 
> 
> And this is only the beginning... 
> 
> As always, thoughts, comments, theories and constructive criticism are always welcome.


	5. Silver Linings

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IM BACK ON MY BULLSHIT!
> 
> So this chapter isn't that new for people who remember the old chapter 4, which Ive torn apart and made two chapters cause it's my party and I can if I want to. I took some things out and added some other things and on the whole Im much happier with it now, so. 
> 
> (Also I added a slightly hopeful ending, because anyone who's still reading this deserves it. Apologies about the horribly long hiatus.)

There's a heavy silence that swallows them up and for a moment no one speaks, each of them struggling to shoulder the weight of Five's words. Luther feels hollow, the same empty feeling in his chest as when he realized his four year exile to the moon had been for nothing. 

_It had all been for nothing._

Allison's the first to break the silence. "But...why? Why pretend, if all they wanted to do was kill us, why go through the trouble of making us think he was back?"

"Sadistic freaks," Diego mutters, glaring at the tabletop but Five shakes his head. 

"They aren't- well they are, but that's not why." He turns, looking at Vanya. "It's because of you," he says softly.

She looks up, meeting his gaze for the first time since they got there. "Me? Why me?"

"Why was it you the first time? Because of who you are, what you can do." He glances around the table, gathering them up in the conversation. "The Commission still wants their apocalypse. At the time they still believed the best way to make it happen was to manipulate Vanya, drive her to the point of destruction again. But she's put a lot of work into controlling her powers since last time, so it wasn't going to be so easy. It was going to take a lot more than a Harold Jenkins to trigger that kind of destructive impulse. It was going to have to come from someone she really loved. Someone she _trusted_."

"Five," says Vanya, voice thin as smoke. Allison reaches out and clasps their hands together.

Five looks at her and nods, something like an apology in his eyes. "That's why we looked thirteen. You weren't supposed to know. None of you were."

Luther has to admit it made a weird sort of sense, in as much as anything the Commission did could make sense. Except... "He didn't want to trigger an apocalypse. He wanted to kill us. What was the point?"

Five looks down and Luther can't see his eyes anymore. "He didn't _want_ to", he says, voice full of what might be regret. "He didn't have a choice." After that he's quiet for so long Luther starts to wonder if he's going to say anything else. Then, "Something went wrong. We think- we think they didn't have a chance to finish whatever it was they were doing. Whatever programming they were trying to give him, that would have made him push Vanya over the edge. Somehow, he escaped." 

"How did you escape?" Luther asks, playing a hunch. Because who else could have created _this_ clone except the Commission? Who else would have branded the word CHRONOS in his flesh? And how else could he be here helping them, fighting his own doppelganger, except he'd managed to get away as well? Unless this too was part of an elaborate ruse...

"We had help," he says, waving the question away, "but that's not important right now. Like we said, he escaped. But he would have been confused, scared, running on instinct. That instinct would have brought him back to the academy, but his mind was- well. He wasn't the Commission's lapdog yet, but he wasn't really us anymore either. He had a killer's instinct but they hadn't erased his personality completely. He-" Five catches himself and falls silent. Luther leans forward.

"He what?"

"Nothing."

"Now isn't a good time to keep things from us, Five."

Five looks at them, looks uncomfortable. Looks away. "He was -probably in a lot of pain," he mumbles finally, almost too soft to be heard. 

Luther doesn't want to think about that and apparently neither does Five. He shakes himself and hurries on, giving them no time to linger over the words and their implications. "Anyway, when it became clear his programming didn't take the way they expected the Commission started looking into other avenues of apocalyptic genocide, something that didn't involve any of you." He tips his head to the side, a thin, mirthless smile cutting a line across his face. "They found one, which made Vanya and the rest of you obsolete, along with the boy's mission. So they reacquired their lost property and patched in an update. But they weren't taking any chances this time. By the time the Commission was done fucking with his head there was nothing left; nothing but his powers and that's the only thing they've ever cared about anyway. Everything else- everything he was...gone. He _had_ to follow Commission orders. Only this time the orders weren't to infiltrate the academy. They were to terminate it."

Diego's been slowly splintering the tabletop with the tip of his knife, tremor in his hand belying his agitation. "So if we're all 'obsolete', where does that leave Five? Wouldn't they just kill him now too?"

Luther hadn't thought of that. What assurance did they even have that their brother - their real one - was still alive?

"He's too valuable to kill," Five says, the faint sneer on his face telling Luther there's more behind the words than his brother's usual self-aggrandizement. 

"The Handler said he had information they needed," Vanya interjects hopefully and Five's sneer deepens.

"_Genetic_ information," he clarifies, "and they got it. That's why they aren't going to kill him. It's also why they aren't going to let him go." 

"CHRONOS," Luther says suddenly, proverbial light bulb turning on at last. 

"Chronos," Five agrees dryly, "The clone project name. Appropriate, don't you think? "The father of time". I'm sure whoever came up with that one felt very clever."

Luther thinks about that, working his way through to the logical conclusion (and probably getting there long after everyone else). "So he's what, some kind of tissue donor?"

The smile Five gives him is bitter as week old coffee. "That's a pretty politic term for it, but yes. He's a tissue donor. So they can create us; the perfect temporal assassins." 

This time the silence isn't just heavy, it's palpable; a pebble thrown into a well with no bottom.

"Five- Five would never agree to that," Vanya says, her voice small and thin to the point of breaking because no, Five _wouldn't_ agree to that and they all know it but something tells Luther it doesn't really matter. Five wouldn't have agreed to most of the things that had happened to him lately, Diego had been right about that much. 

Five's smile twists, and the laughter is sharp enough to draw blood. "You think the Commission gives a damn? You think we had a _choice_? It's _the Commission_. They'll take whatever they want whenever they want it, they always have. And what they wanted from the Prime were the warp abilities locked in his genetic code. As far as they're concerned everything else is disposable. Lucky for him, cloning a clone doesn't work too well. There's a degradation that happens, the DNA's too easily corrupted. That means they have to keep him alive; fresh samples work the best."

Something about the way he says it makes Luther's skin crawl. Like Five was nothing more than a specimen. Something to be poked and prodded and used. To that end, the time sickness he suffered from was probably a bonus for them. Made the job so much easier now he couldn't fight back... he feels ill. 

By now Diego's gouged a quarter sized hole in the table, slivers of wood littered about like confetti. "But Five hates the Commission," he points out, not looking up. "Last time he went anywhere near 'em he blew their headquarters to shit. They're _lucky_ there isn't more than one of him. H-how did they think it would work out for them, making more of you? Why would they even want to?"

"You'd know the answer to that if you'd been paying attention," Five snaps and Diego's back stiffens. "Clones aren't like other people, Deigo. We can be programmed, and unprogrammed. And the Commission has some very scary technology at it's disposal. Genetic modification, behavioral implants, memory wipes..they can mold us into anything they want us to be. All they need is a donor."

Luther lets the words wash over him, feeling less confused about some things and more confused about others. Christ, no wonder Five had been desperate to get away..."So who programmed you?"

"Nobody. We escaped before they had a chance to mess with our head."

That sounded plausible, but something wasn't adding up, something he couldn't quite put his finger on. Luther went over it all again, looking for whatever it was he could sense but not see. 

Allison got there first. 

"But you're not sick," she says suddenly, "If you're a pure clone of Five, shouldn't you have time sickness like he does?"

He shakes his head, "They would have repaired that neural damage before they cloned us. Otherwise they would have had to go back and fix each one of us individually. A lot easier to fix it at the source and not have to worry about it any more."

It's the first hopeful thing Luther's heard tonight and he wasn't expecting hopeful. As such it takes him a few moments to realize what he's just heard. He looks up, trying to keep the feeling at bay, not let it spread. He isn't ready to hope yet. Still..."You mean- if we find him, he could be better?"

"He should be, yeah."

A shadow leaves the room, leaves everything feeling a little bit brighter, the air a little bit fresher. The weight on his shoulders a little bit less. It was still a horrible mess, but there was a sliver of hope, something to cling to. If they could just find him, move heaven and earth and get him back...they've fought the Commission before. They could do it again. They would.

They could save Five.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always thoughts, opinions and constructive criticism are welcome. Part 6 is in edits.


	6. Silver Linings pt 2

**9:04pm, Sunday September 8th, 2019**

Listening to him talk, Vanya's reminded of the first night after Five stumbled his way back from the future. The night she found him sitting in her apartment alone in the dark with blood on his clothes, smelling of what she now recognizes as gunpowder and telling her about impossible things. About the apocalypse, about a world on fire and ash that fell from the sky like snow. Telling her it would happen in a week. Telling her because he had to tell _someone_, and he knew she would listen.

She didn't listen. 

She heard, certainly, but she didn't _listen_, not in the way he'd needed her to. In her defense, her listening skills were rusty; she wasn't used to being confided in by anyone. But that seemed like a cheap excuse even to her own ears.

But how could she have known? How could she have known that the brother who came back looking like he hadn't aged a day had lived a lifetime? Those youthful hands growing rough like leather, the hair turning tombstone grey. So much easier to believe that he'd just gotten confused, that the leap forward had damaged him in some fundamental way. (Except now, of course, she's seen him damaged from time travel. She knows what it looks like when his mind's been 'contaminated' and it's not delusions about the end of the world.) It would have been different, she thinks, if he hadn't still looked like a child. If he'd been able to wear the years on his face and-

"How old are you?" she asks suddenly, realizing at least part of what has been nagging at her, the hole running through the middle of his story. (One of them, anyway.)

He pauses to look at her, blinking. "What?"

"How old are you?" She asks again, holding his gaze. 

He hesitates, then scowls. "That's not important," he says dismissively, and she instantly disagrees.

"When Five came back he was fifty-eight and looked thirteen," she counters. "You look twenty-five? Thirty? Nearly as old as us. But how can that be, when you said you escaped the Commission before they had a chance to do anything to you. So how old are you, really?" He wouldn't have spent two decades at the Commission without being 'programmed', and he certainly wouldn't have lived that long in the world without coming to find them before now. 

He hesitates again, chewing the inside of his lip before sighing in something like defeat. "On a cellular level, around twenty-five, give or take. In linear time ...not too sure, but we think it's about five weeks, maybe six."

_Six weeks._ Her siblings stare open mouthed, too shocked to speak but Vanya finds she isn't as surprised as she might have been. She's long since given up the idea that anything about her brother or his timeline could be simple and direct. Five, after all, was only simple and direct when he was killing people.

There's a feeling like a hand around her throat and she shudders. 

On the other side of the table Diego is the first to recover. "You're six weeks old!?" he blurts out, looking like he's rethinking a lot of things. "And you don't think that's important information?"

"It really isn't," Five says, the exasperation in his voice tinged with a weary kind of resignation. Taking in their incredulous stares he sighs again and squeezes his eyes shut, pinching the bridge of his nose. "We're a _clone_, and age is just a number. Our physical bodies can be whatever the Commission wants them to be. Fifteen, twenty five, fifty eight; they can stop the process wherever they like. It's the difference of a couple days linear time. And as far as we know, this body's been active a little over a month."

_It hasn't been a month since Five disappeared,_ Vanya thinks, but what did that matter? It hadn't been forty-five years either.

Luther shakes his head, confusion crushing his face together. "If you're twenty-five, then- do you still remember everything Five does? I mean, he was fifty-eight..." 

Five looks annoyed by the question but answers it anyway. "Not everything," he admits. "If we remembered everything, things would be a lot easier." She wants to ask him what that means but surprisingly doesn't have to. "We remember what the Prime remembers, our life from before the mental degradation occurred. But, during the time we were sick- we don't remember very much of that, and neither will he." 

Two out of four siblings open their mouths to talk but Five ignores them, running ahead as if his explanations weren't simply giving them more questions. "The Commission can repair neural damage, but they can't retrieve memories that were never formed. When the mind's infected by time sickness it becomes incapable of distinguishing between past, present and future events. Everything- _everything_ exists as an eternal 'now'. Impossible to create memories when the brain can't understand the concept of time." He's talking with his hands now, the way he always had, fingers sculpting pictures from his words and it comforts Vanya in some nebulous way. Unlike the strange boy who'd appeared in the kitchen, this one really did seem like their brother. Even if the years were different, he _felt_ the same.

"Past, present _and_ future?" Allison cuts in, sounding skeptical.

"We're a time traveler," he reminds her, but it's not an answer that satisfies anyone. 

"That doesn't make any sense," Diego says, giving Vanya a sudden jolt of deja vu and she wonders if that's what it's like to have time sickness, the feeling of everything happening at once, even the things that hadn't happened yet...but that didn't make sense either. How could you remember something that hadn't happened to you yet?

For his part, Five looks done with all of them, thin veneer of patience vanishing under what he obviously thought were a lot of very stupid questions. "Nothing about any of this is going to make sense until you accept that time doesn't move in a straight line. It only seems like it does because your dumb, 3-manifold monkey brains can't process it any other way!"

"And you can?" Diego shoots back. 

"_Yes_," Five hisses from between clenched teeth. 

"Guys-" Vanya warns, not wanting to derail the conversation with arguments because Five's actually talking to them and giving them answers and she wants to keep the streak going because she's afraid as soon as he realizes it he'll stop. 

Diego casts a heated look in her direction but backs down. Sort of. "Fine, all right, fine. We're a bunch of dumb monkeys that don't understand time. Whatever."

Vanya and Allison share a look. _Here we go again._

Surprisingly it's Luther who jumps in, trying to shift the topic away from monkey brains which admittedly was probably not what they should be focusing on right now. (But somehow, whenever they all got together conversations always devolved into things like that.) "Is that what all that's for?" he asks, nodding to the stack of papers Five had taken from his room. 

"Yes," he acknowledges, resting his hand on them. "They're whatever thoughts we managed to scrape together while our brain was imploding." 

"And there's something in there that will help you find Five?" Vanya guesses, remembering what he'd said back at the mansion. _The twins said we'd written it down_

"Maybe," he says, then gives a strange laugh. "I hope so, because it's the only chance we've got."

"The chance to do what?" Klaus says, the broken bell over the door giving a pathetic, tinny sounding clunk as he sauntered in, "What'd I miss?"

Vanya isn't even sure where she should begin.

"Do you have my shirt?" Five demands and Klaus grins like a school boy. 

""Oh, yea-" he says, tossing over a faded brown button up, "-here ya go." Five gives it a delicate sniff and wrinkles his nose in distaste but puts it on anyway, not bothering to be discreet as he changes in the middle of the dinner. No one seems to care, the waitress glancing over with indifference before going back to rolling silverware, a fine grey ash filtering down from the cigarette in her mouth. 

Suddenly Five pauses while doing up the buttons, blinking at Klaus with a strange look on his face. "What the hell are you wearing?" he demands, and Klaus looks down at himself in admiration.

"What, this? Just picked it up. Like it?" He holds himself out for inspection, wearing what was probably supposed to be a shirt, if it had been designed by a ward full of mental patients. Vanya's getting a headache just looking at it.

"No," Five says with utter sincerity, but he's still staring at it, oddly puzzled look on his face. Then his eyes widen. "We need to leave," he says suddenly, urgency in his voice that makes Vanya's gut clench and she looks out the window, expecting Temps agents with guns and face masks, or assassins with briefcases. Any number of catastrophes run through her head, but there's nothing there. Just an empty, rain washed street, the on-off buzz of a broken neon light. 

"Why?" Allsion asks, but she's already shrugging on her jacket.

"There's something we need to do."

"What do we need to do?" 

"No, not you guys, _us_\- me. There's something I need to do." He's already turned towards the door and hovering, impatience making him jittery. Something's happened, she's smart enough to know that. She just doesn't know what it is and that sets her on edge. 

"What about the answers you promised us?" Diego asks, and something dark flashes over Five's face. 

"You've got them," he says curtly, "Let's move."

Vanya doesn't think they're anywhere close to getting all the answers but what else was to be done? She knows her brother well enough to know she can't force him to stay anywhere, talk about anything (she's tried before). When Five was ready to go, he left.

So she doesn't bother trying. Instead she fishes her wallet out and drops some money on the table because in her experience Five never carried any cash with him. Why should he? He'd never needed it in the apocalypse and anything he wanted nowadays he could get without paying for it.

A few minutes later they're following him out the door and into the cold night air, and Vanya has no idea where they're going next.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> new chapter! (as promised)
> 
> As always, questions, comments and constructive criticism are welcome.


End file.
